The Book of Revelation or Book of the Apocalypse is the final book of the New Testament. Written in Koine Greek, its title is derived from the first word of the text: apokalypsis, meaning 'unveiling' or 'revelation'. The Book of Revelation is the only apocalyptic book in the New Testament canon. It occupies a central place in Christian eschatology.
Midrash is expansive Jewish Biblical exegesis using a rabbinic mode of interpretation prominent in the Talmud. The word itself means "textual interpretation", "study", or "exegesis", derived from the root verb darash (דָּרַשׁ), which means "resort to, seek, seek with care, enquire, require".
The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events relating to first-century Christianity. The New Testament's background, the first division of the Christian Bible, is called the Old Testament, which is based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible; together they are regarded as Sacred Scripture by Christians.
Dei verbum, the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, was promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 18 November 1965, following approval by the assembled bishops by a vote of 2,344 to 6. It is one of the principal documents of the Second Vatican Council.
The Epistle of Barnabas is a Greek epistle written between AD 70 and 132. The complete text is preserved in the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus, where it appears at the end of the New Testament, following the Book of Revelation and before the Shepherd of Hermas. For several centuries it was one of the "antilegomena" ("disputed") writings that some Christians looked on as sacred scripture, while others excluded them. Eusebius of Caesarea classified it with excluded texts. It is mentioned in a perhaps third-century list in the sixth-century Codex Claromontanus and in the later Stichometry of Nicephorus appended to the ninth-century Chronography of Nikephoros I of Constantinople. Some early Fathers of the Church ascribed it to the Barnabas who is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, but it is now generally attributed to an otherwise unknown early Christian teacher, although some scholars do defend the traditional attribution. It is distinct from the Gospel of Barnabas.
Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text. The term is traditionally applied to the interpretation of Biblical works. In modern usage, exegesis can involve critical interpretations of virtually any text, including not just religious texts but also philosophy, literature, or virtually any other genre of writing. The phrase Biblical exegesis can be used to distinguish studies of the Bible from other critical textual explanations.
Biblical inerrancy is the belief that the Bible "is without error or fault in all its teaching"; or, at least, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact". Some equate inerrancy with biblical infallibility; others do not.
Raymond Edward Brown was an American Sulpician priest and prominent biblical scholar. He was a specialist on the hypothetical Johannine community, which he speculated contributed to the authorship of the Gospel of John, and he also wrote studies on the birth and death of Jesus.
Moisés Silva is a Cuban-born American biblical scholar and translator.
Biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles of interpretation concerning the books of the Bible. It is part of the broader field of hermeneutics, which involves the study of principles of interpretation, both theory and methodology, for all forms of communication, nonverbal and verbal. While Jewish and Christian biblical hermeneutics have some overlap and dialogue, they have distinctly separate interpretative traditions.
The concept of an immaterial and immortal soul – distinct from the body – did not appear in Judaism before the Babylonian exile, but developed as a result of interaction with Persian and Hellenistic philosophies. Accordingly, the Hebrew word נֶ֫פֶשׁ, nephesh, although translated as "soul" in some older English-language Bibles, actually has a meaning closer to "living being". Nephesh was translated into Greek in the Septuagint as ψυχή (psūchê), using the Greek word for "soul". The New Testament also uses the word ψυχή.
Biblical inspiration is the doctrine in Christian theology that the human writers and canonizers of the Bible were led by God with the result that their writings may be designated in some sense the word of God. This belief is traditionally associated with concepts of the biblical infallibility and the internal consistency of the Bible.
Biblical literalism or biblicism is a term used differently by different authors concerning biblical interpretation. It can equate to the dictionary definition of literalism: "adherence to the exact letter or the literal sense", where literal means "in accordance with, involving, or being the primary or strict meaning of the word or words; not figurative or metaphorical".
Disputes regarding the internal consistency and textual integrity of the Bible have a long history.
Taḥrīf or corruption of the Bible, is a term used by most Muslims to refer to believed alterations made to the previous revelations of God—specifically those that make up the Tawrat, the Zabur or Psalms, and the Injil. The term is also used to refer to what Muslims consider to be the corrupted Jewish and Christian interpretations of the previous revelations of God, known as “Tahrif al-Mana”. This concept holds that earlier revelations have been misinterpreted rather than textually altered.
Isaiah 53 is the fifty-third chapter of the Book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. This book contains the prophecies attributed to the prophet Isaiah and is one of the Nevi'im. Chapters 40 to 55 are known as "Deutero-Isaiah" and date from the time of the Israelites' exile in Babylon.
The books of the New Testament frequently cite Jewish scripture to support the claim of the Early Christians that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah. Scholars have observed that few of these citations are actual predictions in context; the majority of these quotations and references are taken from the prophetic Book of Isaiah, but they range over the entire corpus of Jewish writings.
John Edgar Goldingay is a British Old Testament scholar and translator and Anglican cleric. He is the David Allan Hubbard Professor Emeritus of Old Testament in the School of Theology of Fuller Theological Seminary in California.
The Catholic theology of Scripture has developed much since the Second Vatican Council of Catholic Bishops. This article explains the theology of scripture that has come to dominate in the Catholic Church today. It focuses on the Church's response to various areas of study into the original meaning of texts.
Stanley P. Saunders is a New Testament scholar, whose particular research interest includes eschatology, creation and the Gospel of Matthew. He is also involved in issues of social justice particularly pertaining to the American criminal justice system and creation care.
